I own nothing but Alex and the concept of Soul's Directive. Warnings: language, torture, and a gore.
I woke slowly, and shifted uncomfortably. My whole body felt hot, but there was a burning cold at my back. I felt the surface beneath me with my hand. It was smooth and ice cold to the touch. Wha…how did I get on the floor? Hazily, I remembered falling ill…
I gasped. The exam! What time was it? I attempted to sit up, but fell back onto the hard floor, my body too weak to move much. I cracked open my eyes, trying to make out where I was. It was dark, and sound was muted, as if I had cotton stuck in my ears, but I could hear what sounded like a dull scraping. Blearily, I could make out the ceiling. It looked like it was covered with…were those transmutation circles? I turned my head, and had to fight a wave of dizziness before I could open my eyes again.
"Nina," I croaked, my voice sounding like dry sandpaper. Nina was sitting a few yards away from me, Alexander huddled to her side. But something was wrong… Her eyes were wide open, and she seemed to fold into herself, trying to make herself look as small as possible.
She was locked in a cage. Alarm swept through me and I tried to take in my surroundings through the dizziness. The room I was in looked like a cellar with concrete walls. Every surface was covered in what appeared to be transmutation circles. My senses were coming back to me gradually, and I began to notice more. Movement to the side of me caught my eye. I peered into the dark recesses of a cage to my left, one of many I could see in the room. Slowly, a trembling creature came into the light.
My eyes widened in horror. The creature panted through a maw of razor sharp teeth, its breath a white mist in the frigid air. It was grotesque. It looked like a cross between an alligator and a dog, its proportions awkward and unnatural. The creature lifted a contorted claw at me and made a violent swipe towards my body, causing me to flinch badly, but still unable to move away.
"Chimera," I gasped in disgust. I peered into the other cages in my immediate range of vision and saw similarly perverted creatures, all seeming to howl in agony and scrape their cages in a cacophony of pain. I shuddered violently in fear. When I had heard the theory of fusing two or more animals together, I was not expecting…this.
"Awake are you," a cold voice echoed off the walls. Tucker…? I struggled to lift my head off the cold ground in order to see him. He was sitting at a desk on the far side of the room, a candle flickering beside him. He was turned in my direction, but I could not make out his expression.
"Did you think I wouldn't notice," Tucker spoke suddenly, his voice loud over the scraping of suffering creatures. He stood and walked over to loom over my prone position on the floor. "I'm the Sewing-Life Alchemist. Did you really think I wouldn't figure it out?"
"Tucker…what…" my voice trembled. "Where are we…why is Nina…"
Tucker ignored me completely. He crouched down and I got a view of his eyes. They were wide open and staring at me, but they were empty, as if his soul was absent. I shivered in fear. He looked insane. "It's funny. I've always been underestimated in my life. People have always looked at me like I wasn't good enough. Like the State. Like my wife…"
"Tucker…please…" Suddenly, his face contorted in fury and he grabbed my bangs, lifting my upper body off the floor painfully. I cried out and Nina whimpered from her cage in fear.
"You think I'm worthless too, don't you! You thought I wouldn't figure it out, but I did! Edward and Alphonse's bodies and your strange alchemical signature. Did you think I wouldn't recognize a transmuted creature if I saw one? You boys did the taboo. You attempted human transmutation!" He shouted, his voice shaking with strain. My eyes widened in shock, and I struggled weakly to escape his painful grip. What did he mean by transmuted creature?
His face slacked back into a relaxed calm, freakishly going from one extreme to another. "Hm. The drug I gave him must have worn off…" he mumbled to himself. He dropped me abruptly and walked back to his desk, rummaging.
My mind was reeling. Tucker had figured out what happened, somehow. But what he said about me…it couldn't be right. I gave off a strange alchemical signature? Ok, but I wasn't transmuted. I was pulled into Al's vacant body when his soul was taken to fuel the transmutation to bring back their mother…Pinako said so...right? Tucker seemed to think I was the subject of that transmutation…
"You're wrong," I croaked. "Ed and Al didn't create me. They were trying to bring back their mother…I was pulled into Alphonse's body…"
"Their mother, hm…It's actually quite simple then, what happened. You see, Alchemy has three parts: Comprehension where you must understand the inherent structure and properties of the atomic or molecular makeup what you are transmuting, Deconstruction, where Alchemists use energy to break down the identified material into a more easily molded state, and Reconstruction, where we continue the flow of energy, via transmutation circle, to create a new substance of equal value. That is what is printed in the books on Alchemy, and that is what you will find in most cases. However, there is one other concept that is not oft written about, but is just as important. Soul's Directive." Tucker lifted an empty bottle up to the candlelight and cursed, before putting it back and continuing his rummaging.
"Soul's…Directive…?" My strength was slowly returning to me, and I struggled to sit up.
"Yes. You see," Tucker continued, speaking normally as if this was just another lecture over dinner, "Comprehension, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction aren't enough. You have to be able to visualize exactly what you are creating. My guess is, that when Edward and Alphonse attempted to bring their mother back, Alphonse lost his body and Edward lost his arm or leg. Edward, who was the only person remaining to drive the transmutation circle, witnessed his brother's body being consumed, and his Soul's Directive changed in that moment from wanting to bring his mother back to life to regaining his brother. Unconsciously or not, he changed the equation."
I gaped at Tucker, my arms trembling to hold my weight. This body was actually meant to be Trisha…? But…
"I went to their house to investigate, and what I found was absolute Hell. There was a huge transmutation circle on the floor of their basement and in its center…I can only surmise that they were trying to bring back their deceased mother, but what they created wasn't human. I buried the poor creature in the back yard." Pinako said, shuddering visibly.
But…
My senses came back to me slowly, as if I was experiencing the slow reactions of a dream. I turned my face to the side in annoyance from the tickling raindrops and flinched when my cheek met grass. How the hell did I get outside?
But…
"…I'm sorry, but I don't remember what happened that night either. I recall Brother and I putting our hands on the transmutation circle to complete the ritual, but I blacked out after that. The next thing I remember I am in this body and Brother is losing a lot of blood. So much blood…And that thing we created," Alphonse's voice began to tremble, "it wasn't even her…it was in pain and we created it! It was screaming–"
This theory was crazy, but none of us had really talked about what had happened that night. No one could really remember what happened, save for Ed, and even he didn't know what to make of me...Could it be true? But if I was that thing they created, then why did I look like Alphonse three days later?
"What I don't get," Tucker said, suddenly sounding angry, "is how two children managed to perform a perfect human transmutation! You should be a bloody contorted corpse, no more than a cadaver only able to live for a few short minutes. How did they do it!?" He slammed his hands on the desk, and I flinched badly. "I've been studying for decades, and two upstarts manage to do in one year what I haven't managed to do in forty!"
Tucker's position suddenly relaxed, and he turned to me slowly, clutching something in his hands. I gasped in fear, and struggled to move my unresponsive limbs. He was holding a handful of thin knives, their smooth metal glinting a wicked red in the candlelight. He stalked forward and I was powerless to stop him.
"Daddy no!" Nina, who had been silent up to this point, suddenly yelled out. Tucker paused in his stalk and glanced over at her dispassionately. "Niiina," Tucker intoned, and Nina flinched, tears streaming down her small face. "What did Daddy tell you about interrupting his work?"
"Please," she hiccupped bravely, "don't hurt big brother." Alexander growled menacingly, and Tucker frowned in annoyance. The insane man heaved back and brutally threw one of the daggers. I screamed, throwing out my arm uselessly. The dagger hit with a dull thud and Alexander yelped piteously before crumpling to the cage floor. Nina cried out in terror, before passing out behind him.
Tucker sighed. "Damn, I guess I'm going to need another animal…perhaps one I've already transmuted…"
"You fucking bastard," I yelled, struggling desperately to get to my knees. "What are you going to do with Nina!"
Tucker turned his cold eyes to me, a grimace of distaste on his demented features. "God, you are so noisy. You're just like my wife, always calling me names and yelling at me." He continued his stalk towards me and I froze in terror. He picked me up by the scruff of my neck as if I was a weak kitten and dragged me to an open space in the room. I watched the floor underneath me in horror: he was dragging me to the center of an immense transmutation circle. I struggled with as much strength as I could, slowing him down slightly. Tucker cursed and threw my body to the center roughly. He straddled me and sat heavily on my abdomen, forcing me to stop moving and struggle to breath.
"Don't worry, Alex," He said, inspecting one of the knives in his hand, "I won't do anything to Nina as long as you are a good boy. You see, I was going to transform her and Alexander into a talking chimera, as I had done with my wife all those years ago to get my State Certification. After all, why change something that works?" I gasped pathetically, crushed under his weight. "You..sick bastard…"
"But then you came along," Tucker continued, ignoring my comment. Or perhaps he could no longer hear me. "A perfect human transmutation, and I thought to myself, why not use a creature that has already been transmuted once to create my chimera?" He grabbed one of my wrists and held it to the floor. He lifted a knife above it, and I began hyperventilating, watching it glint in the red light. "After all, your soul has already survived one trip through the gate, why not another?" He plunged the knife straight through my hand and into the floor, impaling it in place. I screamed, convulsing violently and almost throwing Tucker off. He held me down through my convulsions until I fell limp, my body going into shock.
"Relax, Alex, I just need you to stay still. I only penetrated the muscle in your hand, so there won't be any permanent damage. I can't turn in damaged goods after all." He got off me, and I curled around my impaled limb.
Tucker moved away from me as I trembled in agony, my blood pooling beneath me on the floor. The last of the drug burned out of me in a violent wash of adrenaline, but I was now in too much pain to move. Receptors fired off in my mind to escape, run, fight!, but my strength had left me. Shakily, I brought my other hand to try and remove the knife that so cruelly pinned me to the floor, but I couldn't bring myself to touch it, unconsciously fearing more pain.
Tucker moved about the room, seemingly oblivious to my aguish. He paused in front of several cages, muttering to himself, before shaking his head and turning to another. Finally, he stopped in front of a medium sized cage and crouched down. He opened the bars of the cage and pulled out a squirming creature, hitting it hard over its head with the butt of a knife to still it. He brought the dazed creature to the center of the transmutation circle next to me, and held it to the floor. Deftly, he plunged the knife into the animal's shoulder, careful not to destroy any tendons. It screamed as he got off of it, it's cry an unnatural squealing. I looked passed the knife in my hand to look at the creature that Shou intended to merge me with, and nearly threw up. It looked like a cross between a rat and a snake, it's writhing body convulsing over the pool of blood that grew around it.
Tucker crouched down near the edge of the transmutation circle. "Please…no…" Was this it? Was this how my story ended? I would be merged with some perverted creature to become this crazy man's meal ticket? This man, who had transmuted his own wife just for money and a shiny pocket watch? "No…" tears ran down my face, only to drip down into the pool of blood soaking my clothes. Tucker's hands moved to touch the transmutation circle and I closed my eyes in defeat. All of the people I had ever loved flashed before my eyes: My parents, my lover, little unborn Alyssa, Winry, Izumi, Orkan… Ed an Al… It would all end here. I was a fool to have thought this story would ever have a happy ending. I braced myself for the pain that would be the rest of my short existence. Time seemed suspended as I waited for the guillotine to plunge.
"My my, what do we have here," a voice asked from behind Tucker. The chimeras, which had all been screaming up until this point, fell silent. My eyes snapped open.
Tucker spun around. "Who –" Tuckers body jerked forcefully as he was pierced by long spikes of black. His blood splattered onto me and I watched with wide eyes as his body fell lifelessly to the floor.
A tall woman was revealed. She had long waving black hair and blood red lips. Her body was a perfect hourglass figure wreathed in black on her chest was a red mark; a dragon biting its tail. She turned her eyes to me, and my breath hitched. She was one of the most gorgeous beings I had ever laid eyes on.
"You poor dear," she said in a sultry tone. The spikes, which appeared to be distended fingers, retracted back into the woman's hand, pulling out of Tucker's corpse with a sick squelch. "I got here as soon as I realized that something wasn't right. Looks like I was right on time."
The woman sashayed over to me, and I cringed back in fear, no longer able to comprehend what was going on. She gently brushed her fingers over my forehead to my cheek in a sick imitation of affection, marking me with Tucker's blood. I trembled, unable to take my eyes off of her. "Sorry I didn't get here sooner, little one." She brushed her hand down my side, as if trying to comfort a scared animal.
Abruptly, she grabbed the knife impaling my hand to the floor and yanked it out with a violent twist. My mouth opened in a silent scream of agony and I jerked my injured hand to my chest. Finally free, I stumbled to my feet and backed against the wall trying to press myself through it.
The mysterious woman stood and brought the knife to her lips, licking off a drop of crimson blood. She smiled at me coyly and pointed towards the open door. "Run." She said.
I did. I skirted around her, nearly tripping over Tuckers body, and ran for my life.
–
Lust the Lascivious dropped the blood soaked knife on the floor in disgust. That was too close. If she hadn't come in when she did...
She looked around the room in distaste, taking in all of the cowering abominations around her. Viciously, she extended her fingers and killed them all, reveling in their dying throes. She checked in each cage to make sure she had gotten them all. She had, all except for one white dog, which had already been dead when she arrived. She turned and left the room, not seeing the small child lying unconscious behind her deceased companion.
Their interests were still intact, for now.
Ha! Bet you didn't see that coming! Or maybe you did. Am I being predictable? Anyways, we find out a bit about what might have happened that fateful night, but it brings up more questions than ever. Was Alex really in Alphonse's recreated body, or was he another creature entirely? And what the hell is Lust doing there? WOULD ED EVER GET TALL?! The boys will speculate more in the next few chapters.
Disclaimer: the information about alchemy was from FMA wikia. They were kind of vague on how Alchemists were forming exactly what they wanted, so I took creative initiative. This is my theory about what might have happened, so sorry if it is not entirely accurate. It makes sense for how I want this story to go, so I'm sticking with it.
Next Chapter: Ed and Al return home triumphant, only to find a massacre, and an injured Alex runs into someone after his blood. Please let me know what you think! See you next time!